


both have sharp teeth

by Anonymous



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avocados at Law, Fluff, Gen, Podfic Available, Red Room, but i wanted to be sure, but then it gets a little fluffier and then more sad than angst and i don't know, for like a long time, honestly it's about what you'd see on the show, i like to think there's a balance, i'm not gonna lie it's mostly angst, the violence isn't what i would think of as too descriptive, there's some hints of karedevil in here but easily ignored
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 10:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4874134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And there are stories about wolves and girls. Girls in red. All alone in the woods. About to get eaten up. Wolves and girls."<br/>-Black Widow, Nathan Edmondson</p><p>She is one of 28.</p><p>The story of the girl who would be Karen Page, through Russian winters and New York streets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	both have sharp teeth

She is one of twenty-eight.

The girls have no names. This is one of the earliest things they are told. They are not people. They are tools. They are labeled accordingly. She is #26. This is her number. This is her rank.

They do not feel mercy. They do not feel pain. They do not feel love. They do not feel.

#26 knows where to drive a salad fork through a man’s stomach so that he’ll never breathe again. She knows how to pirouette, and how to smile, and how to mix poisons so well that no one would ever know they were there. She knows this before she can remember knowing.

She also knows pain and screaming and watching blood _drip drip drip_ onto floors and through grates.

Her world is the whites of snow, and the reds of blood, and the screaming, sickening yellow of needles in her skin.

 

They cannot wipe her mind of the dreams that come at night. They have tried and they have succeeded with the other girls. Never with #26. She has learned, after things strapped to her brain and pain so intense and blinding, how to sleep still and perfect to disguise the raging wildfire within.

The blood on #28’s tutu is the one concrete image in all of them.

 

#26 has been operational for fourteen years when she is assigned a partner, #4. #4 has been operational for sixteen and is whispered about in the Room, scarlet hair like dying.

They bunk together, eat together, kill together. They feel no attachment. It has been burned into them not to form attachments, especially to partners. If a partner is going to endanger or cost a mission, they must be eliminated.

#26 has eliminated three partners. #4 has eliminated six.

 

Watching #4 work is like watching grace incarnate.

They are not supposed to watch. They are supposed to do the mission efficiently and move on to the next target. But sometimes she will linger for half a second, a second, two, and watch #4’s flashing knives and fights so intricate they may as well be dances.

#4 is the model they have all been given to strive for and watching her in action, #26 understands why.

 

They go through the trials again one year after #26 has been partnered with #4. They are to be pared down to 14. The trials last 48 hours. It is only when she has showered and is lying still in the bunk below #4 that she realizes that she consciously avoided #4. She chooses to believe it was a case of self-preservation. No attachments in the Room.

She is now one of 14. They still refer to her as #26.

 

These trials were worse than the last and yet the constant in her nightmares is the blood on #28’s tutu.

 

Soon it is not just #4 who is grace incarnate. They move in tandem, killers in an elegant duet. They know each other’s moves before they make them. They are knives wearing human skin, and they know no limits. Their average mission time is twelve minutes and forty-nine seconds. Their handlers are pleased.

 

The dreams do not get any better and #26 can feel herself stretching out thin. It will reach a breaking point soon, she knows, and then it will be the end for her.

She snaps after a mission two years after she and #4 have been partnered. She is kneeling, surrounded by large dead bodyguards and two small future heiresses to an oil conglomerate. She is soaked up to the elbows in blood and something tiny inside her fractures.

“I don’t want to do this anymore, Four,” she whispers. Her face is wet and she realizes she is crying. She has never cried outside of the needles and the conditioning and the punishment. “I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to.”

The room is not bugged because they never need to be. She is a liability now. #4 will take her out, and she will be a hollow shell, nothing but a blank book on an empty floor. As #4 crouches down in front of her, #26’s final, irrelevant thought is _I wish I had a name_.

“Do it,” she whispers. “Just do it, please.”

#4 is staring at her and in a world where #26 is better than many at reading faces, she cannot read hers.

“Do you trust me?” #4 asks softly. #26 doesn’t understand. Partners are to be trusted with their lives in the Room. They must be given the certainty that they will have their backs. There is no betrayal in the Room. There is always trust.

“Of course,” she hiccups. “In combat-“

“Not in combat. In the rest of the world.” There is no rest of the world, and #4 must see her incomprehension. “In your head.”

#26 hesitates. She is not supposed to say yes. She is supposed to say they are not allowed to have an in their head. She is supposed to lie.

“Yes,” she croaks.

#4 nods and takes a deep breath. “Good,” she says, and then her fist flies towards #26’s face.

As #4 hits her and then when she is sprawled on the ground kicks her, #26 wonders dimly if this is how #4 eliminates her partners. #26 has always done her best to give them a quick death. She supposes that at least when it comes to how to kill, all girls are different.

She doesn’t fight back. She deserves this.

After one minute and seventeen seconds #26 abruptly kneels and bends by her prone form. “Trust me,” she breathes in her ear as she checks her pulse.

Their handlers burst into the room as #4 straightens. #26 can see it feebly through the eye that isn’t swollen.

“#4,” one of them commands. “Report.”

#4 snaps to attention. “The mission was a success,” she answers briskly.

“What’s happened to #26?”

“One of the bodyguards caught her by surprise and attacked her violently. It caused great trauma and involuntary tears. I eliminated the bodyguard and left #26 to continue the mission. I have just checked her vitals. She is alive.”

The handler nods and motions the men behind him. They pick #26 up and as she hangs limp, she looks at #4, who watches her emotionlessly.

 

It takes #26 two weeks to heal. #4 did her job well.

 

#26 does not know how to approach it, so she asks as they lie on their stomachs on top of a roof together, sniper rifles positioned in front of them. Missions, she knows, are never bugged.

“You spared my life,” she says quietly, looking through the scope as they wait for their targets. “You were supposed to eliminate me. And then you saved me from the handlers by covering up my weakness. Why?”

#4 does not answer for a long time, so long that their marks are almost upon them when she finally does.

“You do not want this life, Twenty-Six,” she says. She adjusts the rifle slightly and then pulls the trigger. “Neither do I.”

 

“I still have nightmares,” she tells #4 as they smile charmingly, hovering together at a ball for a wealthy banking heiress. #4 calmly raises her champagne flute to her lips as #26 talks. “They could never take them out of me the way they could take them out of all of you.”

“They didn’t.” #4 grins as she carefully places a few leaves of salad in her tiny bowl.

“They didn’t what?” #26 swirls the wine in her glass.

“Take away the nightmares. I still have them. The partners I eliminated had them. I don’t think they ever took them out of any of us.” #4 bites one of the lettuce leaves in half. “I think we’ve all just become exceptionally good liars.”

#26 rifles around in her purse to take out a handkerchief and cough into it. “Do you ever dream about the trials? What we did during them?”

#4’s hand has a single tremor as she drains her champagne flute. “Yes.”

#26 folds her handkerchief and puts it back in her purse. “I always see the blood on Twenty-Eight’s tutu,” she whispers, enchanting smile never fading. “It’s burned into my brain.”

#4 clears her throat and holds out her arm to link with hers. “Our deeds are awful,” she murmurs as they walk towards the heiress. “And we are worse.”

They hug the heiress hello and kiss her on the cheek. While #4 compliments her shoes, #26 quickly drops a tablet into the heiress’s glass. It takes three and a half seconds to disappear. They say goodbye to the heiress and are gone before her throat starts to close and she chokes.

 

“We all had names once,” #4 tells her as they calmly twist and turn the wires in the basement of the government building. #26’s hands falter as she strips them and then resumes.

“I didn’t think I ever had a name,” she whispers.

“I’m not surprised. You were very young when they took you.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw files I wasn’t supposed to. I saw them for seventeen minutes before they realized what I was looking at.”

“Did you memorize them?”

“Every one.”

#26 puts down her wires. “What’s your name?”

#4 doesn’t smile. #26 has never seen her smile unless she was faking it for a mission and doubts that #4 ever has smiled otherwise. After all, #26 hasn’t. But #4’s face twitches, like it wants to.

“Natalia,” she answers. “My name was Natalia Romanova.”

“Natalia,” #26 says softly. She plucks up the courage to ask the next question. “What’s my name?”

“Your parents called you Yelena Belova.”

  1. #26 has a name. She was born with a name.



“Yelena,” she whispers. “I am Yelena and you are Natalia.”

“We don’t have names anymore.”

“But we can,” she insists. “I am Yelena and you are Natalia.”

Her face twitches again. “All right.”

They go back to their wires when she pauses.

“Do you remember Twenty-Eight’s name?” she asks quietly and Natalia stills.

“Irina Antonova,” she murmurs.

As they finish with the wires and walk away, leaving the building to burn behind them, #2- _Yelena-_ whispers the name over and over again so she can carry it with her always. _Irina, Irina, Irina_.

 

Natalia tells Yelena all of the names she saw and Yelena repeats them in her mind before she sleeps every night like a prayer.

 

They bring in a man to train them when Yelena has been operational seventeen years and Natalia nineteen. He has long shaggy hair and keen eyes, and when he kills he is brutal. They call him the Winter Soldier. They lose two operatives ( _Anna, Valeria_ ) when they are not fast enough to train.

Yelena is now one of 12.

Natalia is his favorite. They move fluidly and beautifully. Yelena sees the looks she and the Soldier exchange, and she knows.

“You are playing with fire, Natalia,” she says quietly as she shovels more dirt into the unmarked grave of the politician in the forest.

“I know.” Natalia pats the dirt down on the grave she has been working on and moves to the next. “But I think he is possibly worth getting burned.”

 

Not long after Yelena notices the way the Soldier and Natalia look at each other, their handlers also see. The Soldier vanishes, and for four days, so does Natalia. Yelena executes her missions as normal and she mourns.

One night when she returns to her bunk from a mission Natalia is laying handcuffed to the bottom one. Her face is severely bruised and her arm is tucked stiffly into her side.

Yelena does not say anything. Her face betrays nothing. Inside, she cries with relief.

 

“I didn’t think I would ever see you again,” Yelena murmurs as she and Natalia sit in the train station late at night, Natalia in a wheelchair.

“I am too valuable to immediately dispose of,” she says in a low voice. “They wanted to see if they could get me back to standard operating form before they took drastic measures.”

Yelena looks at Natalia. Her jaw is clenched and her eyes are burning with silent rage.

“They did not succeed,” she observes. “They may think they did, but they are wrong.”

“No. They did not. And they never will.” Natalia turns her fiery eyes on Yelena now. “We will escape this place. We will be our own.”

“We will be free?”

“Yes.”

Yelena shakes her head slowly. “I have never experienced freedom. I do not know what I would do with it.”

“Neither do I. But we will learn.”

The train arrives and Yelena wheels Natalia through the doors. She sits next to Natalia, who is across from the mark.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t mean to bother you, I’m _so_ absentminded.” Yelena smiles flirtatiously at the mark. “Do you think you could tell me the time?”

The mark looks at his watch. Natalia leaps from her wheelchair and strikes.

 

They hold trials yet again. They wish to get the number of operatives down to 2. Yelena and Natalia plot their route beforehand to avoid each other.

Four of the agents come to Yelena and ask her to kill them because they cannot handle it anymore. Their names are Tanya, Viola, Alisa, and Varya. She wishes that they were not being monitored so she could whisper their name to them as she slid her knife into their hearts.

On the next mission, Yelena asks Natalia if any came to her seeking mercy. Natalia’s eyes shutter.

“Six,” she answers. “You?”

“Four.”

Between them, they gave salvation to the remainder of the agents.

Yelena is now one of two.

 

“We have to strike soon,” Natalia tells Yelena as Yelena finishes dismembering their victim. “We are the last ones standing. Soon they will become frightened that they will be discovered and caught. They will execute us to dispose of the evidence.”

“We have to take them all down.” Yelena puts the remains of their victim in separate bags. “Dismantle as much of the organization as we can.”

They both know that they will never get every branch of the Room, that they will never die of old age, that they are fated to be tracked down by someone they missed and they will be executed for their disloyalty. They don’t say it.

 

They attack when Natalia has been operational twenty years and Yelena eighteen. It takes forty seven hours. They are bloodied and battered and bruised, but at the end of those near two days, they are free.

Yelena is too exhausted to feel it.

 

They are in their hotel room in Norway, as far as they could get feeling safe to stop and rest. Natalia hands her a file of documents.

“Your name on these is Sonya Petrova,” she tells her. “You can change it when you wish.”

Yelena nods. “I wish you’d reconsider.”

Natalia shakes her head. “I can never reach absolution,” she answers. “But perhaps if I kill enough of the people who do not deserve it, I will no longer feel damned.”

Yelena understands. She cannot bring herself to do it, cannot bring herself to ever pick up a gun again. She will live with her blood soaked soul rather than kill once more. But she understands.

“We can’t have contact for a long time,” she says. “Possibly ever. It will raise the chances of us being tracked down.”

Natalia nods. ‘I know.”

Yelena hesitates. “I trust you with my life,” she stumbles over saying. “Thank you for taking care of it.” She tries out a word she has heard before. “You are my sister.”

Natalia clearly understands everything she is trying to say and can’t put into words. She reaches out, a little awkwardly, and pulls Yelena into a hug. Yelena has never been hugged by anyone genuinely before. She clings to Natalia as tightly as Natalia is clutching her. It feels warm and comforting and when they pull away, there are tears in Natalia’s eyes.

“My sister,” she says to Yelena. She smiles for the first time that Yelena has ever seen, and it is somehow warm and complete and broken all at once. Yelena answers her with a cracked and tentative one.

“My sister,” she answers.

Natalia shoulders her bag and leaves the hotel room. For the first time in her life, Yelena is truly alone.

 

She travels to many countries and plays with many names. She feels emotions begin to blossom within her and she rushes at them with open arms, saying _welcome back, welcome back, you were never supposed to leave, be here to stay._

She comes to America, moves to the Midwest. She takes the name Page, for her new start, and Karen, for the waitress in a restaurant in Sweden who laughed when she was first trying out jokes as a part of life, and was the first person she ever made laugh.

She works in a library in Iowa. She doesn’t work in the children’s section. Whenever she sees children she is too painfully reminded of little girls practicing throwing knives, all in a row.

On the news she sees the invasion of the monsters from the sky, and on the footage she sees a redhead fighting alongside a man with a bow and arrow. The woman’s face is sharper and older, but it is undoubtedly Natalia, alive and whole. She falls to her knees in the bus station and cries when she sees the footage on the TV they have mounted on the wall with the news. There is a great deal of that from everyone, however, and she goes unnoticed.

 

Two years later, all of Natalia’s information leaks (Natasha, now) when SHIELD falls. When Karen (she is Karen now, Karen is just like a cover, submerge yourself in the cover completely so that even you believe it) sees that she released it herself, she thinks of Natalia killing to scrub her past, and her heart aches.

 

Karen moves to New York, not long after the fall of SHIELD. She likes cities, the bustling sprawl of them, the tiny pockets that one can stick themselves in and never be found. She settles in Hell’s Kitchen, takes a job with Union Allied, and gets an apartment. She tries to settle into a normal life.

She does her best to ignore the growing itch under her skin, the one telling her that she needs to run, fight, anything that will make her heart beat and feel like she is whole.

_(She wishes she could deny it but there is a part of her that feels gone without a mission, without a reason to chase and dance)_

 

When she finds the discrepancy in the books, she deliberates. It _could_ be unintentional, it could be a mistake. Every instinct screams that it is not, that it is corruption at its finest, that she has seen this all before.

But she has to take a chance. She has to try and believe in better nature.

 

When she wakes up lying next to a dead man on the floor, she screams and she screams and she screams. She has seen dead men before. She has been the one to kill them more often than not. She screams because she swore never again would a man be dead by her hand and even though she did not wield the knife herself, it is still her fault.

Karen will try the legal channels to acquit herself and when they fail her she will disappear into another state, another country, another continent and pretend that she carries anything other than death with her once more.

 

Matt and Foggy smile brightly and blindingly. Karen looks at them and sees all the hope and sweetness of two people trying to do their best to help. It is something she marvels at in humanity, their desire to change the world for the better.

Karen has been too molded away from humanity for too long to feel like part of it.

 

The guard attacks her in the prison and she is off guard.

The man attacks her in her apartment and she is off guard.

This is what she would tell her handlers, if she was still in the Room.

The truth is, she doesn’t want to kill anyone anymore. She doesn’t care if it means they kill her in the process.

 

The Man in Black has been trained well.

As she watches him flip around in the rain she recognizes each move, can feel the ache of them in her muscles as she remembers performing them herself. He shows off a little, dances a little more than he has to. But he does well.

When he survives, something in her unclenches and relaxes.

When she thinks on it a few weeks later, she will realize that seeing him standing there, clutching her flash drive in his bloodied hand, that it was the moment that she pulled herself out of the lost and angry haze she was in ever since she woke next to a corpse.

These souls are lost and broken, and they need a hand up.

She can do good without it having to be at the end of a smoking gun.

Even if she loses herself and her life in the process.

 

When Foggy smiles at her, it is wide and earnest and bright. When Matt smiles at her, it is quieter but still blazing and brilliant. In her eyes they burn like bonfires in Russian winters.

They are the embodiment of good in human skins. They remind her of when she was nothing but a sharpened knife, only better, so much better.

They burn like bonfires and when she is around them for the first time in a long time she feels warm.

 

There is something that shrouds Matt’s face almost always.

Foggy doesn’t seem to see it, but Foggy hasn’t been trained to look. Karen can see it, in all its infinite complexities. Matt is hiding from them.

She doesn’t mind. Everyone is hiding something.

 

Soon after she joins with them, she realizes that Karen is no longer a cover.

It’s no longer inspecting the line between _what would Karen do_ and _what would Yelena do_. It’s now what would _she_ do, what is _her_ course of action. Karen is her name now, her life and her world.

 

The dreams of Irina ease. They only happen perhaps once a week, sometimes even once every other, and when she dreams now she dreams of eels at the bottom of bottles, of red sunglasses, of the sunlight streaming onto her desk.

 

“What did you find in my past that would make me unreliable?” she asks Ben Urich quietly one day, while they’re drinking coffee in some tiny dive.

Ben watches her thoughtfully, then puts his mug down.

“Your files don’t all line up,” he answers. “It’s very good, mind you. But there’s some dates slightly out of place. Some references that lead back to dead ends. If you picked and knew what you were looking for, you’d find loose threads. Whole picture could come tumbling down. May want to fix that.”

“No. Not all of it would. Some. But never all.” A hint of the Russian slips into her voice and she inwardly berates herself. Ben raises his eyebrows.

“I suppose not.” He swirls a spoon in his coffee. “Is Karen Page your real name?”

She shrugs a little. “It is now.” She is proud that she keeps the accent out. Ben nods. “Are you going to say anything?”

It’s Ben’s turn to shrug. “We’ve all got secrets, Miss Page.” He lifts his mug again. “Far be it from me to reveal yours.”

 

The world falls apart.

The first time it happened, when Karen was just a number, it was gradual, being stretched and stretched until she snapped. This time, when Matt and Foggy are split over something they won’t talk about and the case is falling down around their ears, it isn’t a long stretch but an abrupt, jagged cut, a sudden slice.

 

It is when she is sitting across from James Wesley that Karen Page realizes that she cares if she lives or dies.

The gun is sitting in front of her, and with it all her choices and her promises, all her never agains. She could leave the gun and die but leave a life, or she could take the gun and a life and live to see another morning.

And although her heart aches with it, she knows like a bolt out of the blue that she wants the second option. She wants to hear Foggy bellow _The Pirates of Penzance_ again and see Matt grimace at the sound, and she wants to watch Matt and Foggy easily fall into their banter rhythm about the stupidest little things.

She’s built a life.

She wants to see it through to the end.

            When she picks up the gun it is cool and familiar. It is an extension of her.

            She shoots him more times than she has to. She doesn’t regret it. Not for a second.

 

            After that, she again sees splattered red on a white tutu every night.

 

She clutches Matt and whispers that he’s not alone and doesn’t realize how fiercely she means it until the words slip out.

She knows that Foggy knows more words to show tunes and opera than she would have ever thought possible. She knows that when Matt is trying to be stern but failing that his eyes crinkle slightly. She knows that Foggy’s seen _Fellowship of the Ring_ 27 times and cries every time that Sam doesn’t abandon Frodo. She knows that Matt doesn’t like spicy food and likes red velvet cake.

She knows them like she knows the lines on her hands and the pale scars on her back. They are her family now and they will only be alone when she is dead.

 

            A month after Fisk, Karen will still see out of the corner of her eye her hands, soaked red and dripping. She jumps and always looks at them head on, but they appear clean.

            (She still hasn’t told them about Wesley)

            Matt’s shroud is a little looser and a little thinner. Foggy has gained one, frail but shrink wrapped around his face. She doesn’t know what happened between the two of them. She doesn’t ask.

            There are six tiny gyms around Hell’s Kitchen. Matt frequents one of them, something Karen found out when she was there one night and heard one of the men who was there often, a grizzled older man, ask if the “blind Catholic boy” would be in that night. A little digging is all it ever takes. Apparently he’s very good at it and she would sort of like to see him in action. But he goes when it is dark and he is alone, and everyone needs their own space for their own reasons, so she abandons Fogwell’s Gym.

            That leaves five. She goes to one each night out of the work week and trains. She fixes her rusty boxing and delivers high kicks to the punching bags. She mostly goes when it’s dark out and the lights are flickering in the gym, and the only people there are the ones who keep to themselves. They see how aggressively she punches and stay out of her way.

            She has only ever broken three punching bags. She’s a little disappointed in herself. She thought she was better than that.

            There are other corners of the city, the quieter darker ones that nobody knows because nobody asks about them. It’s where she can improve her hand to hand, her knife skills. There are three rules. No deaths. No stabbings. Nothing to the face. She goes until she is on top again, the best that she can be. Then she returns to the underground gun ranges, familiarizes herself with all of the new guns, the ones that one can’t find in stores for the public.

            Karen wishes to live. She has been caught off guard too often. It will not happen again.

            She thinks Matt suspects, sometimes. He’ll stop when he walks into the office and asks if she’s hurt herself recently. She smiles and says that she bruised herself bumping into a table. It’s not wrong. She just doesn’t mention that she was thrown into it at hand to hand.

            Foggy notices, too.

            “Dude, your arms look awesome,” he tells her while she’s making coffee. She blinks and looks down at them. They have become more toned again while she has been training and they stand out against her sleeves.

            “Oh. Thanks.”

            He pokes at her arm and she laughs. “Seriously, it doesn’t even move. Have you started lifting cars over your head when I wasn’t looking?”

            She grins at him. “Just trying to fit into some old clothes again.”

            “If you don’t fit by now you’re trying to fit into tiny Barbie dresses.”

            She laughs again. “I’ll have you know I look great in pink glitter.”

            Matt just watches, and says nothing.

 

            Foggy’s inspecting the latest photo of Daredevil in the paper while Karen types up their latest case file.

            “He’s got _horns_ , Karen,” he says, voice pained. “ _Horns_.”

            Karen smiles. “I know, I’ve seen.”

            “They’re _stupid_.”

            “They’re not very stealthy,” she agrees.

            “They’re not _supposed_ to be stealthy,” Matt mutters. “They’re supposed to make an _impression._ ”

            “Of what?” Karen leans back and folds her arms across her chest, still grinning. “Soul reaping?”

            “No.” He answers very quickly. “The Daredevil doesn’t kill people.”

            “Not even the very bad ones?”

            “No. It doesn’t excuse murder.”

            Karen feels the turn in her stomach and slams full force into the emotional regulation training from so long ago. Lock away severe emotional upset until it can be handled so as not to compromise the mission.

            “Well,” she says, impressed with herself by how calm she is. Emotional regulation was never her strong spot. Her smile is still on her face. “I hope when you became the official Daredevil spokesman you told him to pay us. If he’s one of those billionaire vigilantes we could use some more money around the office.”

            Foggy snorts. “I bet he’s not. I bet he’s some dirt broke weirdo with a horn fetish.”

            Matt pulls a face and Karen snorts.

            They close up ten minutes. When Karen gets into her apartment, she calmly locks her front door. She fills up the bathtub, climbs in, and lets the floodgates loose.

            _It doesn’t excuse murder_.

            She forgets sometimes that they don’t know who she really is. She may be Karen, but she is also Yelena, is also #26. These people all have a home within her body. She is dripping with the souls of many. If they saw her, who she truly was, they would be repulsed. She has seen their moral code and she does not have a place within it.

            She doesn’t deserve them.

            She reaches behind her and runs her hands down the nearly invisible scars on her back, fingers tracing every memory. She could run. She could take only what she needed and flee to a new state or a new country. She would disappear and they’d never find her.

            But it’s too late. This person they think she is has carved a space in their hearts. If she vanishes, they will worry.

            She could tell them the truth. But then they would hate her, and she doesn’t think she could possibly bear that.

            She has to keep lying. It’s the only avenue she’s left for herself.

            Karen takes her hands off her scars, wipes her eyes, and gets out of the tub.

 

            When she comes into work the next day she is tired and wan.

            “Sleep poorly?” Foggy asks and she smiles thinly.

            “Yeah,” she answers truthfully. Last night the dreams of Irina were stronger than ever before.

            “Dude, that sucks.” Foggy gives her a sympathetic look. “You want to go home, take the day off?”

            She doesn’t deserve them.

            “No, thanks. I think I’d just rather work.”

           

            For a week Karen acts like she’s okay. She is perfect as always, just like she used to be. She is pleased with herself. She knows if she acts like she’s fine, she will become fine.

            At the end of the week, Matt and Foggy are standing in front of the door when she comes in from making sure they’ve turned off the coffee maker. They forget sometimes.

            “Oh. Hey, what’s up, did I forget something?”

            Foggy shakes his head.

            “We wanted to talk to you, Karen,” Matt says quietly. Her stomach clenches and she plasters on a smile.

            “Is this an intervention?” she asks weakly.

            They don’t laugh.

            “Something’s wrong,” Matt tells her. “We want to know what’s going on and if you’re okay.”

            Karen shifts from foot to foot. “How could you tell?” she asks quietly. There must be some flaw in her cover. Something she missed. She needs to know for future reference.

            “We _know_ you, Karen,” Foggy answers. “We can _tell_ when something’s wrong.”

            Oh. She hadn’t factored that in.

            She sighs. “I’ve just been working through some personal stuff,” she says wearily. “I’m not really…” she shuffles again. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

            Matt nods. “We understand.”

            “Of course we understand!” Foggy grins at her. “Matt’s Catholic and I’m a manly man type. We don’t cry, we repress our feelings until we’re warped and bitter.”

            “You’re already warped,” Matt murmurs and Karen can’t help a small chuckle, the first in a while.

            “Ignore Matt, he’s an asshole. Anyway, we would like to take you out for an evening of wine, women, and song! Provided you’re into that middle thing, but if you’re not we can find whatever floats your boat.”

            “What Foggy means is that we’d like to take you out for dinner. Not a strip club.”

            “You’d take everything fun out of life if you could, wouldn’t you?”

            Karen smiles a little.

            “I’d like that,” she says.

 

            “I am an _amazing_ movie narrator,” Foggy declares loudly, arm linked with Matt’s as they stride down the sidewalk together after their dinner. Karen laughs, feeling a little lighter and warmer.

            “I find that really hard to believe.”

            “That’s cause you haven’t heard it! Tell her, Matt.”

            “Foggy is a passable narrator.”

            “Damn stra- hey, dude, whoa, come on, we both know _that’s_ a lie.”

            Karen throws back her head and laughs and in that one moment of startling vulnerability, her arm is tugged and she is yanked into an alleyway.

            The man is holding a gun directly to her forehead. Her back is pressed to the wall and immediately threat analysis kicks in. He’s not sent by remnants of the Room. His form is too sloppy. They would have hired someone better. He’s just an average mugger.

            “Hand over the purse,” he says. She studies his eyes. They’re hard and cold. He’s done this before many times. He won’t hesitate to shoot her.

            All she needs to do is hand over the purse.

            “Karen?” she hears distantly from Matt, ahead where they have walked before they noticed she was no longer walking behind. The man’s lips quirk.

            “Don’t want them to get hurt, do you?” He asks, and two other men come out of the shadows. He has a gang. Terrific.

            “It’s fine.” She keeps her voice just the right amount of trembling, just the right amount of scared so they don’t suspect that she has taken down quadruple their number in three minutes and eighteen seconds without breaking a sweat. “You can have it, look, I’m handing it over.”

            “Karen?”

            She freezes and genuine fear does appear in her stomach now because Foggy and Matt are right at the mouth of the alleyway. The two other men immediately draw their guns and point them at Matt and Foggy. The man in front of her cocks his gun.

            “Next to the lady,” he says. They silently move next to her. Karen doesn’t look at them, doesn’t move.

            “It’s fine,” she repeats for their benefit. “I just need to give them my purse.”

            “Empty your pockets,” he says to Matt and Foggy. It’s fine. They’ll get out of this. Nobody will have to get hurt. It’s fine.

            Right until she sees Matt tense out of the corner of her eye and she _knows_ what’s going to happen like it’s a book she’s read before.

            Matt is going to try and do something stupid. These men will kill him because they know what it is like to be in a fight of this caliber and Matt does not. Foggy will try and do something stupid because of what will happen to Matt and they will kill him too. Karen will kill them when they turn on her. And she will have killed again and again and again, and she will be surrounded by the corpses of the two good things in her life.

            She would rather they hate her for what she is than dead because she was too scared to act.

            Karen reaches out and snatches Matt’s arm and yanks him back from the tiny step forward he’s taken. She slips off her shoes and flexes her toes in her tights.

            “You keep your money in your shoes?” The man with the gun to her head asks.

            “No.” She takes one step, two, so the gun is pressed right to her forehead. Matt grabs her arm and tries to pull her back. His grip is surprisingly strong but it still only takes a couple seconds to break it. “I like these heels.” She squares her balance and takes a deep breath, her last one before she smashes the world she’s built around her. She allows her Russian accent to enter her voice. Not all, because there is not all of that person left in her. But enough to make her dangerous. “I don’t want to break them.”

            _Don’t kill, don’t kill, don’t kill._

            Like lightning she slams her hand up and breaks his wrist. He screams and falls to the ground. The other two start shooting at her. She slides across the ground and drive her hand into one of their ankles. Two down. The other keeps shooting. She vaults off the opposite wall, flips so she lands on his shoulders and hauls him to the ground. She stomps on his arm and hears the crack.

            “You _bitch!_ ” The one who had originally dragged her into this mess yells. She kneels down and quietly picks up each of their guns. She takes the bullets out and throws them, scattering them across the alley.

            “You made me someone I don’t want to be anymore again,” she says quietly. “I’m not entirely delighted with you right now.”

            He staggers to his feet and swings at her with the arm that isn’t broken. She kicks him in the face. She feels his nose break under her heel. He hits the ground again.

            “I know you’ve killed before. I know what the bearing of a human who has done so looks like.” She lifts his chin so he meets her eyes. “You don’t mourn that. You’re proud of it. If you do this ever again, I will know. You live because I don’t want to stain my soul any worse. You live because I will give you a chance at redemption. If you fail me, I will take steps to make sure that you suffer a worse fate than a broken wrist and a broken nose.” She stands and looks dispassionately at the other two. “The same goes for you as well.”

            Karen turns back to Matt and Foggy. Both look stunned. Foggy looks a little frightened. She closes her eyes for a moment.

            She picks up her shoes by the inside of the heels and takes a few steps into the alley. She hesitates and turns her head slightly. She doesn’t look at them. She can’t.

            “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “ _Bozhe moi,_ I am sorry.”

            She walks into the alley and doesn’t look back.

 

            Karen spends the eleven minute and thirty nine second walk back to her apartment thinking about what to do.

            They will want to know who she is. She has lied to them long enough. She wouldn’t be able to do it any longer. She would tell them the truth. They would learn about all the blood on her hands.

            They would see the monster she hides. They would see who she truly is and they would hate her. She cannot bear that.

            So when she gets back to her apartment she pulls up the loose floorboard and pulls out her getaway bag. She puts the important things she wants to take with her that aren’t already in her bag. The book teaching her Braille, the selfie Foggy took with her and the picture he took of her and Matt that she kept framed on her nightstand. She places a passport next to it, bearing the name _Helena Ballard_. She cuts her hair to halfway between her ears and her shoulders and places a set of green colored contacts next to the bag on her table. She prints out a plane ticket to Nevada, a state she’s never been to, and maps of the state.

            Karen will sleep in this apartment tonight, in this bed, and pretend that her life is still intact. And then at 5:30 in the morning she will leave this life behind.

            She’s never going to see Matt and Foggy again.

            She wipes her eyes as she washes the soap out of her hair.

            She dresses in all gray, her sweatpants, her tee shirt, her sweater. It is similar to the outfit she wore in the Room when she went to sleep and she is ashamed to see it feels like an odd semblance of home.

            She stares at her nightstand drawer for a long time before she opens it. The only thing in it is a dusty single pair of handcuffs with a key. She takes a deep breath and cuffs herself to her headboard, hating herself for the sense of peace it gives her.

            _This is who you have always been inside_ , she reminds herself as she settles with her back to the headboard, flipping through the maps with one hand. _You’re just not hiding anymore_.

            She reads for a while, studying every street in the town she’s relocating to, every alley, until she hears a slight shift of metal. She whips her head around.

            Daredevil is on the fire escape outside her window, watching her.

            Karen leans her hoodie clad head against the headboard and looks back. They are both still for one minute and sixteen seconds.

            Then she sighs and puts the maps down. She reaches over to the top of her nightstand for the key and unlocks the handcuffs. She walks up to the window and opens it, stepping back as Daredevil climbs in.

            “It’s not a good night, _d’yavol_ ,” she says softly. “I’m not really up for conversation.”

            He doesn’t say anything.

            “I suppose you aren’t either.” She turns to her maps and folds them neatly. She hesitates, hand hovering over the cuffs until she quietly tucks them into her hoodie pocket. She turns back to Daredevil.

            “What do you want?” she asks. He still doesn’t say anything. She pulls her hood a little more over her face. “Look, I’m not really up for the mysterious thing you’ve got going on tonight, so you can tell me what you want or you can go away.” She walks out of her bedroom and heads to her table. She puts the maps and the cuffs in her bag. It takes a little reorganizing. She pulls out the Braille book and the photos so she can rearrange the bag. Daredevil is next to her. He frowns at the book and pulls one of his gloves off, running his fingers over it.

            “It’s Braille.” His voice is low and rough and familiar in a way that Karen can’t pin down. “You’re learning Braille?”

            “Someone important to me is blind so I started. Might as well not let it go to waste.”

            He touches the frames next. “What are these?”

            “Can’t you tell?”

            His lips twitch and she feels that tug again, that tug of knowing him. “Humor me.”

            She shakes her head a little. “This one is a selfie one of the men I work with took with me.” She touches the frame Daredevil has his hand on. “This is a picture that he took of the other man I work with and me.” She smiles faintly. “He meant for it to be stealthy but he left the shutter sound on.”

            Daredevil has a small smile too. She stares at that smile and then it clicks. She understands the shroud that Matt wears and the one that Foggy has gained, how he always knew when she’d hurt herself training. She turns to face him fully and he angles his face down at her, smile gone. He knows now, too.

            Karen reaches up and finds the catch on his mask. She takes it off to reveal Matt’s face.

            “I knew a girl who could do what you do once,” she whispers. Little Irina, who explained her viciously red world to her as best she could and was better than all the lie detectors that the Room ever built.

            “What happened to her?” he asks, voice pitched normal now.

            Karen gives him a trembling, exhausted smile. “Nothing good.”

            “I don’t understand you,” he says quietly and she can’t help the choked little laugh she gives at that.

            “You and I are in the same boat regarding that one,” she answers. Her voice doesn’t crack. It only wavers.

            They’re quiet for a moment until Matt says “Foggy’s coming down the hallway.”

            She puts the mask on her table and opens her front door. Foggy’s got his fist raised to knock and blinks in surprise when she opens the door.

            “I’m going to guess that Matt did what he didn’t say he was going to do but I knew he was going to do anyway,” he says.

            She nods, opens the door wider for him to come in, and then heads right for her armchair. She pulls her knees up to her chest as Foggy closes the door and sits on the couch. Matt sits next to him.

            “Ask what you want.” She shifts to get more comfortable in her seat. “I’ll answer all of it honestly.”

            “Why were you handcuffed to your bed when I came in?” Matt asks promptly. Foggy makes a strange choking noise. She knows what he’s thinking and wishes it were that simple.

            “It’s the way I was raised. When we were children they handcuffed us to the beds. When we got older we did it ourselves.” She leans her head back against the chair. “It wasn’t to restrain us. We could have broken the handcuffs easily. It was because we didn’t. It made me feel better doing it tonight.”

            They’re both silent. She picks at the fraying edge of her sweatshirt.

            “What’s your name?” Foggy asks.

            “Karen Page.”

            “Your real name.”

            “Karen Page.” She looks at Foggy dead in the eye for the first time since they left the restaurant what feels like years ago. “That’s my name. That’s who I am now.”

            Foggy nods slowly. “What did they call you when you were a kid?”

            She sighs. “#26,” she says wearily.

            His brow furrows. “#26?”

            “We are not people.” The words are still burned into her tongue. “We are tools. We are labeled accordingly. We do not feel mercy. We do not feel pain. We do not feel love. We do not feel. This is our number. This is our rank.”

            Foggy gapes at her. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

            “When I had been operational for-“ she clenches her fist. _Only fall so far into old habits._ “When     I was sixteen years old, I found out they called me Yelena when I was born. That was what my partner called me then.”

            “You said _they_ ,” Matt murmurs. “Who are they?”

            “I was one of twenty eight operatives with the Red Room.”

            “Jesus _fucking_ Christ,” Foggy says again with more enthusiasm. Matt frowns.

            “How do I know the name ‘Red Room’?”

            “It was in the leak of the files that came out of SHIELD.” Foggy’s staring at her. She shuffles under his gaze. “It’s where the Black Widow was trained.”

            “ _A_ Black Widow,” Karen amends. “There are only two of us left now. She was Natalia, when I knew her.”

            “You _knew_ the- Natasha Romanoff?”

            “She was my partner.” She feels her face twist with a hard and flinty smile. “When she was twenty and I was eighteen we razed the Room to the ground and never looked back.”

            “You took down the Red Room. Holy hell.” Foggy looks like he might have a stroke. “The name _Yelena_ wasn’t in any of the files that got leaked from SHIELD.”

            Her smile becomes softer. “I don’t think she told them I existed. She kept me a secret even when she was trying to get clean.”

            “Why would she?” Matt asks. Her smile fades.

            “It’s more likely than not that we missed someone. The Room had a lot of tendrils. Someday one of them may come looking for me and they will kill me.” She rests her chin on her knees. “It’s surprisingly I’ve lived this long.”

            “You may not be living on borrowed time.”

            She shakes her head, feeling the rough of her sweatpants drag as she does. “There’s no sense in hoping. It’s unrealistic.”

            They’re quiet again.

            “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Matt asks. Foggy drops his head into his hands.

            “Fucking A, Matt.”

            “It’s fine.” She lifts her head to look at Matt. “What do you want me to say, Matt? Every mission that Natasha Romanoff undertook from when she was sixteen on I took part in. Are those the worst? There are thousands upon thousands of undocumented killings from before then. What about them? I’ve killed the old, the sick, the dying, the young, the helpless, the children. I’ve killed those who deserved it, and those who were pure as the driven snow. I am awash in more blood than you can possibly imagine. Which one can you say is the worst? How can you judge?” Her throat tightens and she looks away. “I can’t,” she murmurs. “I’ve tried.”

            He seems undeterred. “What’s stuck with you? What do you carry with you every day?”

            Her stomach drops to her feet. She squeezes her eyes shut.

            “The youngest amongst us was Twenty-Eight,” she whispers. “Later I found out her name was Irina Antonova. She was…” she doesn’t know how to put a word and a name to it after all these years, how to describe the way Irina was. “We were none of us innocent but she was perhaps the closest. She was still so sweet and so small and so… alive. She was so much more alive than the rest of us. It was when the Room was still figuring out group dynamics and many of us were tasked with looking after and assisting Irina. She still smiled. She would still smile and laugh and it was… it was the only time there was ever laughter in those Rooms. They would bounce and echo and expand and it made us feel warm.”

            She opens her eyes, staring straight ahead without really seeing.

            “They held trials at arbitrary times. When I arrived, I was one of thirty-nine. Then came the first wave of trials, and I was one of twenty-eight. They were meant to eliminate the weakest of us. Only the strongest could ever survive in the Room. They held them again when Irina was nine and I was twelve. They structured it as a labyrinth. We were to wear our ballerina outfits and carry no weapons inside. They had various objects inside. We were to fashion our own weapons out of these objects. They would let us know over an intercom when we had whittled each other down to their satisfaction. Until then, we were to fight.

            “I had found a broken pipe with a sharp edge that I was using as my weapon. I was moving across the corridors when I heard a dragging noise. When I rounded the corner, Irina was limping along. She’d broken her ankle in her last fight. She begged me. She begged me to spare her life, not to kill her. She pleaded. She was crying.”

            “What did you do?” Foggy’s voice is hushed. She is certain he knows the answer to his question. Matt doesn’t say a word.

            “I stabbed her in the chest and watched her blood leak all over her tutu.” Karen can hear how dull and blank her rasp is, how completely flat. “I watched her twitch and I watched her die.” She looks at Matt. His face is very carefully an inscrutable mask. “That’s what I see almost every night when I sleep,” she tells him, a bitter taste on her tongue. “That’s what I carry with me. If I had to pick one of my deeds that will drag me to Hell, that would be the one.”

            Any of them, of course, will suffice.

            “This is who I am,” she whispers. “I am Karen Page. But I am this, too.”

            The silence is thick. She closes her eyes and lets it hang, allows them to let the truth of her deeds sink in, the realization of how terrible she is arrive.

            “Holy shit, Page,” Foggy says. She squeezes her eyes even tighter. “You were _twelve?_ ”

            “Yes,” she rasps.

            “Years old?”

            “Yes.”

            “And that was the _second_ time they had you kill people you were close with?”

            “I wasn’t close with anyone else before Irina. I wasn’t close with anyone else after until Natalia.”

            “People you worked with, whatever. How old were you when you did it the first time?”

            “Eight.”

            “Holy _shit,_ Page. How old were you when they took you?”

            “I don’t know. Natalia might, but I don’t.”

            “So you don’t remember a time before the Red Room. That life was _literally_ all you knew.”

            “Yes.”

            “That’s… that’s _fucked up_.”

            She cringes. She deserves that and worse.

            “She wasn’t even the only child,” she whispers. They don’t know yet, not well enough. “There were many more. There were so many more.”

            “I’m not talking about-“ Foggy gapes at her. “I’m not talking about _her_ , Karen, I’m talking about _you_.”

            She cringes again.

            “What they did to you,” Matt corrects. “He means what they did to you.” Foggy nods vigorously and it’s her turn to gape.

            “You don’t understand. I’ve… you don’t understand, I’ve killed people. I’ve killed too many people to count.”

            “Did you do it because you wanted to?” Matt asks.

            “We didn’t want in the Room. We did what we were told.” She struggles again. “I enjoyed pleasing them. I enjoyed doing it because I thought it made them happy.”

            “Karen. This isn’t your fault.”

            She feels her lips part slightly as she stares at them. Matt’s voice rings with conviction and the earnestness in Foggy’s face mirrors it.

            “It’s all my fault. _I_ did it all, all of it, me, I did it.”

            “They used you as tools,” Foggy points out. “You said as much yourself, they used you as _weapons_. You weren’t _people_ to them.”

            “That doesn’t _matter_ , Foggy-“

            “ _Yes it does!_ ” He shouts, bringing his hand down on her coffee table. She jumps at the _bang_ , retreating into her chair slightly. Foggy notices and takes a deep breath. “Yes it does,” he repeats with a calmer tone. “Karen, it’s not like you’re a crazy serial killer. You were _indoctrinated_. That was the way you were raised since _birth_. Matt, back me up here.”

            “You were the equivalent of a child soldier,” Matt agrees. “You were used as a weapon. They _used_ you, Karen.”

            “They emotionally and psychologically abused you.” Foggy gets up and starts pacing. “ _Massive_ levels of abuse, I’m not sure I even know how to _categorize_ that. What they did to you was awful.”

            “You didn’t know any other life than what they taught you, Karen.” Matt reaches out and he grabs Karen’s hand in his gloved one. “You still broke through. You were strong enough to realize what you were doing was wrong, even though you didn’t know any alternative. You’re not who they wanted you to be. What happened to you is not your fault. What you did is not your fault.”

            Karen stares at their hands for a moment. Then she rips her hand out of Matt’s and stands up. “No, no, you don’t understand, you don’t get it-“

            She gesticulates too wildly and knocks her bag off the table. “Shit.” She kneels down and hastily starts shoving everything back in it.

            “Wait, hold up, is that- is that a _getaway bag_? You were going to _leave_?” Foggy kneels down and picks up the tickets as Matt silently moves to sit next to him. “You were going _across the country?_ ”

            “You don’t _understand_ -“

            “Karen-“

            “I’m _bad!_ ” she yells, dropping everything in her hands. Both Matt and Foggy go still. “You don’t understand, I’m _bad,_ I’m awful, I’m terrible, and you’re _not._ You’re both _good_ , both of you, you believe in good and you do good things and you’re _good people_. Neither of you have ever killed. You don’t have that, you don’t-“

            They’re looking at her too sympathetically. They think it’s all behind her, they don’t know.

            “I killed James Wesley,” she says desperately. Matt blinks and Foggy’s eyebrows shoot up his foreheads. “You remember him? He took me off of the street and he put a gun on the table between us and I chose to take it and I chose to shoot him. This isn’t something that is far behind me, this isn’t something I can just shove in my closet.”

            “You shot him in self-defense,” Matt answers.

            “No, no, it was just, it was the gun on the table, it was him or me, and I chose me-“

            “Yeah,” Foggy says. “Like pretty much the definition of self-defense.”

            Karen stares at her shaking hands, clutching her maps and her ticket.

            “You get to choose you, Karen,” Foggy tells her quietly. “You get to choose you.”

            Karen bites her lip.

            She slowly puts the maps and the ticket down.

            They’re silent for about a minute, Karen struggling to breathe normally.

            “Were you really going to just run away from home because you thought we wouldn’t like you anymore?” Foggy asks. “What are you, seven?”

            A choked laugh bubbles out of Karen’s throat, and another, and another. She presses her wrist to her mouth as her entire form quakes. She can’t pinpoint when the laughter turns to crying. She’s not even sure if it ever was laughter.

            Matt immediately leans forwards and grabs her in a hug. Karen’s reminded of not so long ago when she held him in a hug and promised him that he wasn’t alone, and how he gets to return the favor, and it makes her want to laugh, which only makes her cry harder. Foggy wraps his arms around her too, and they are all three sitting there clutching each other, holding together each other’s broken pieces.

 

            Things are extremely the same and extremely different after that night.

            Karen can freely curse in a myriad of languages. She will regularly swear at their office equipment in Russian, Latin, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi. English is rarely used.

            Matt can smell the blood in the air when Karen has bruised herself too much training the previous night, and now he will tell her and try to convince her to go home. If she does not, he will try and make sure she sits as much as possible.

            Karen knows what it looks like when a man is holding himself with cracked ribs, and now she will tell Matt to stay home that night. He will listen, albeit grudgingly.

            Foggy unabashedly throws things at Matt when he’s annoyed now, because Matt can show in front of Karen that he can catch them.

            Foggy will tell Karen that just because her coffee is like what she would drink in the field when trying to make her way back from a Room mission, it does not mean she gets to inflict it on the rest of them.

            When Matt and Foggy get a client who cannot speak English, Karen can translate for them flawlessly.

            Karen no longer has to pretend that she cannot lift heavy objects.

            Karen no longer has to pretend that when Matt mentions the name of a shadowy underworld figure, she’s never heard their name.

            Karen no longer has to pretend _anything_.

            It is the strongest and the most vulnerable she has ever been. It is the best she has ever felt.

 

            “I want to learn how to punch stuff,” Foggy tells Karen one afternoon when Matt is out of the office interviewing a witness. Karen doesn’t react physically, continues organizing files like it’s nothing.

            “Find something you want to punch,” she says even though she is well aware of what he means. “Punch it.”

            “ _Karen._ ”

            She turns around to face Foggy, arms still full of files. “Why?”

            He shrugs even though she’s sure he anticipated this question, sure that he is meticulously planned out the answer. “One of my best friends likes to run around in red leather and punch shit late at night,” he answers. “The other used to run around in black leather and punch shit late at night. I just want to even the playing field.”

            She frowns. “Foggy, you don’t need to know how to fight to be strong.”

            Foggy shoves his hands in his pockets. “Look, I know that. I know that I am strong and that not being able to punch through a brick wall or whatever doesn’t make me any less so. This isn’t some uncomfortable insecurity thing, it really isn’t. But the world is getting _weird_ , man. There are aliens falling from the sky and the Norse gods are real and _Captain America is still around and kicking_. Life is _bizarre_. Especially if you live in New York. New York is the capital of bizarre right now. It’s full of trouble magnets. And these days we three seem to be pretty strong magnets. I just want to know that if I get caught without my baseball bat and without you two, I have at least a shot at handling it.”

            Karen thinks about it. “If you’d tried to punch one of the Chitauri you’d have been fucked,” she points out. “Their skin was basically armor and they had scary spears.”

            Foggy waves that aside. “Only details, Page.”

            Her lips twitch. “Why not ask Matt?”

            “See all the questions you’re asking me about all of this?”

            “Yes?”

            “Matt would not only ask me about a million questions, but even though he would know I was telling the truth he would assume that somehow it was his fault that I suddenly want to learn how to fight and then feel extremely guilty about it until the day he died.”

            Karen snorts, inclining her head. “Fair.”

            “Also he’d pull his punches because he’d feel worried about me and then if he _did_ hit me hard, he’d add that to Matt Murdock’s personal guilt mountain.”

            “And you don’t think I’ll pull my punches?”

            “I think that you understand to make an omelet you need to break a few eggs.”

            Sometimes she thinks she hides herself so well, and then she realizes that they already know so many of the things she’s trying to hide.

            She can’t be blamed, really. She didn’t know that this was how having friends worked.

            “He’ll know anyway by the bruises on your knuckles. And then he’ll think you’re hiding it from him because you don’t trust him, and then he’ll feel bad but he won’t say anything and he’ll let it fester.”

            Foggy groans. “Page, promise me that you’ll always tell me when you have a problem with me so you can make my life easier.”

            “No problem. Quit leaning on my desk because you’re crumpling the papers on it.”

            Foggy rolls his eyes but pushes off.

            “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to Matt.”

            Foggy looks nettled. “I can talk to him myself. I’m a grown man.”

            “Good. He gets back in fifteen minutes. You can sit him down then and have a nice lovely chat about feelings and how you have them.”

            Foggy scowls. “Although if you wanted to soften him up a bit first I wouldn’t mind,” he mutters grudgingly.

            “That’s what I thought.”

 

            Karen knows that often the best form of attack is the surprise one.

            Which is why she waits to bring it up until both Matt _and_ Foggy are in the room.

            She closes the door calmly and leans against it to not so subtly block it from any escapes they may attempt to make. “So,” she says serenely. “Foggy wants me to teach him how to fight.”

            Foggy slams his head down into the table. “I hate you.”

            Matt’s face is stoic. “Oh.”

            “He doesn’t want to do it because you pulled him into some life of angst and darkness. He wants to do it because he just wants to know how to fight.” She pushes herself off the door. “Discuss.” She turns to the door.

            “Wait,” Foggy says. “Where are you going?”

            “I softened him up for you. You two can come out when you’ve sorted everything out.” She slips through the door and leans her back against it. She pulls out her iPad and calmly starts reading a book on dealing with childhood trauma (it was the best reviewed one she could find), queueing up Hozier on her iPod. She keeps it low enough that she’ll be able to hear them when they’re done.

            After about half an hour, Foggy bangs on the door. “Karen!” he yells hoarsely. “We worked it out! Let us out of this hotbox of feelings!”

            Karen stands up and opens the door. Both look a little teary.

            “So can I teach you now?” she asks.

            “Yeah,” Matt answers. “We’re good.”

 

            Foggy’s a quick learner.

            He does get some bruises, to be sure. He was right when he guessed that Karen wouldn’t pull her punches. But he adapts quickly. She’s impressed.

            Sometimes they’re quiet while they work. Foggy’s brow will be furrowed tight as he concentrates and he will have no time for chatter. But sometimes they’ll talk.

            “You were a ballerina, right?” he asks once. “In between all the, y’know, bad shit. Why don’t you go to the ballet more often?”

            “Bad memories.” He blocks her punch. “I watch it on television sometimes. It’s easier than being present for it.”

            “Makes sense.”

           

Sometimes they don’t talk about the past.

            “You need to help me figure out ways to get Matt to eat,” Foggy tells her while he works out on the punching bag. “He keeps forgetting.”

            Karen wonders what it would be like to forget to eat. When she was in the Room they would feed them very little twice a day. When she first got out she would always eat three times a day and as much food as she wished.

            “Should I yell at him to do it?”

            “No. I think we have to be sneakier. I suspect ‘forgetting’ is code for ‘too busy’.”

            Karen nods thoughtfully. “That can be arranged.”

            From then whenever Karen goes out to get food, she brings something back for Matt that she “thought he might enjoy”. Foggy always slides food his way while he’s working on a case and Matt always absently eats it. He’s none the wiser. Both are satisfied.

 

            Sometimes they just gossip.

            “Matt has a three piece suit made entirely out of red fabric,” Foggy informs her. “He vacillates between being proud of it and ashamed.”

            “It sounds amazing.” Karen blocks one of his punches. “Have you seen him in it?”

            “I have.”

            “Do you have pictures?”

            “No, he heard the shutter sound, the fucker.”

            “You’ve got to learn to turn the shutter sound off.”

 

            Eventually Foggy decides that he’s good with what he’s learned, and he’s going to stick to punching bags instead of fighting with Karen. He gives her a silver chain with a small green swirling pendant on it.

            “It’s not much,” he says sheepishly when he presents it to her. “I couldn’t afford something really fancy, but I wanted to say thanks. The guy at the pawn shop said it was malachite, but I don’t really know-“

            Karen launches herself at Foggy, hugging him tightly. After a second of surprise, Foggy hugs her back just as hard.

            “Thank you,” she whispers over his shoulder. “It’s beautiful.” She pulls back and gives him a trembly smile, fastening it around her neck. “I love it.”

            Foggy grins at her. “I’m glad.”

            It’s the first present she’s ever received.

 

            Karen’s watching some recent footage of Daredevil flipping around and pursing her lips.

            “Hey Matt, you’re on TV,” Foggy says when they walk into the office. “Maybe they’ll give you a reality show. They can call it _Speak of the Devil_.”

            “That was terrible.” Matt looks amused nonetheless.

            Karen turns to face Matt. “We need to modify your style,” she informs him. “It needs work.”

Foggy chokes on his coffee. Matt’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and Karen experiences momentary satisfaction of having the rare experience of surprising Matt Murdock.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your fighting style. We’re going to have to work on it.”

“My form is fine.”

“It’s _mostly_ fine. But there are multiple moments when you’re flipping unnecessarily. You’re showing off.”

Foggy looks utterly delighted. Matt frowns.

“I’m not showing off.”

“You really are. And it’s leaving you vulnerable in places. You’ll get hurt or killed.” Karen briskly turns back to her desk. “Meet me at Fogwell’s tonight. We’ll work on it.”

“This is the best day of my life.”

Matt scowls. “Shut up, Foggy.”

 

Fighting with Matt is different than fighting with Foggy.

There is of course the literal way. Foggy was just learning, and only the basics. Matt knows what he’s doing and he’s fast. With Foggy it was educating. With Matt it’s sparring.

But Matt and Karen are also broken in similar ways. They’ve both been lost for a long time and are only now finding their ways back. It makes them more likely to quip with each other and less likely to talk seriously for a very long time.

“Quit pirouetting,” she tells him. “You have a serious problem with that.”

“I don’t pirouette.”

“I was a ballerina, Matt. I know what pirouetting looks like.”

Matt’s lips quirk. “I don’t.”

Karen rolls her eyes. “Blind joke, very clever. Quit pirouetting.”

He doesn’t, which means that she gets to show him exactly where these weak spots are. He doesn’t do it anymore after that.

 

A week and a half after they start sparring, when they’re taking a break, Matt tenses up slightly next to Karen. She sighs.

“Hold on.”

“Hold on what?”

She heads to the cooler she always brings with her to put water in and pulls out two beers. She hands one to Matt as she sits down next to him.

“I thought we’d need these someday.” She looks at Matt. “So what is it?”

Matt takes a swig of the beer before answering. “You said you knew a girl who could do what I do once.”

She anticipated this. “I did.”

“What happened to her?”

“I killed her.”

“Oh.”

Karen traces the rim of her bottle with the very tip of her finger. “I don’t know how it happened to her. We weren’t allowed to know anything about our backgrounds. Natalia might. She was the only one who ever saw the files. All I know is she came to us with her abilities.”

Matt inclines his head towards her. “Do you know how to shut it off?” he asks quietly.

Her stomach lurches and she plays dumb. “Shut what off?”

“I looked into the Red Room training after what you told us. There’s a surprising amount of information thanks to the SHIELD files.” He looks at her not quite in the eyes, but in the face. “Your senses might not be like mine, but they’re not quite like everyone else’s.”

She sighs and rubs her face.

“I don’t know how to shut it off,” she says wearily. “I’ve never known anything else. I didn’t even really know that this isn’t how other people work until I got out. Some of it, obviously, I knew. Some things were… less obvious.”

Matt leans back slightly, resting his arms on his knees. “Tell me about them?”

“Why?” She’s too tired to cushion.

“I’ve been talking some stuff out with, y’know. Foggy. Priest. That kind of thing. It, uh, it helps, sometimes. Not even to talk about everything that happened. Just who you are now. What you can do.” He shrugs. “Helps to have people who know.”

Karen thinks about it for a second, then sighs.

“I could kill you without even thinking about it,” she says bluntly. “You’re very exposed. It wouldn’t take long at all. Your home is easy to break in and out of. I knew it from the second I stepped in there. If you weren’t you, I would have been no safer in your apartment that night than I would have been in mine. I know how to use everything in this room to kill you or defend myself against an intruder. After fighting with you, your moves will be easy to parry. You’re my friend, but at this very moment, there is a part of me that is aware that you would pose no more challenge to me than an angry dog. This is true of 95% of the people that I meet. I can like them as much as I am capable. But I will always know, somewhere in my body, that I can take them out without an issue.” She smirks bitterly. “Makes trust a little difficult all the way around.”

“Not in all cases. Foggy and I trust you.”

“An abnormality I am still deeply confused by.”

Matt chooses not to comment on that, apparently. “I’d guess that’s the obvious stuff.”

“Mmm.” She tilts her head back with her eyes closed. “Every route I’ve ever been on I can memorize almost instantly. I always know the time. Whether it’s counting how much time has elapsed, whether it’s knowing what the time is now. I know it all. I am better at math than anyone I have ever met other than Natalia. I know most languages in the world fluently. I suspect I could learn any others easily.” She gives Matt a bitter grin. “Everything I am could be done on an iPhone.”

Matt shakes his head immediately. “No. Not true.”

“I’m learning. I’m working on it and I’m discovering emotions. I just…” She picks at the bottom of her tank top. “You never know how many you’ll get back.”

Matt leans forwards a little. “You were sad when you thought you had to leave Foggy and I, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you were happy when we accepted you?”

“Yes.”

“You loved Mrs. Cardenas? And you felt grief when she died?”

Karen swallows. “Yes.”

“And you regret what happened in your past?”

She nods.

“Then you’ve got the major ones. Sadness, happiness, love. Those are the big ones. Everything else will come when it’s got to.” Matt puts his bottle down. “And I’ve got your back either way.”

Karen looks at Matt for a moment, then leans her head into his shoulder.

“Thanks,” she whispers. He’s still for one second. Then he wraps his arm around her shoulders.

“Anytime.”

 

Matt’s fighting tightens up. Karen makes him a carrot cake that has been frosted with cream cheese frosting, “congrats on kicking people in the face better” clumsily spelled out in red. Matt looks vaguely affronted when Karen tells him what it says and Foggy laughs so hard he cries.

“It’s not necessarily better,” he tells her. “It’s just different.”

“It’s better,” Karen counters firmly. “Trust me.”

“Take what you can get, Murdock,” Foggy hiccups, wiping his eyes. “Can I have a bigger piece than Matt if he’s not going to appreciate it properly?”

“You two can fight over it. I already ate myself sick on frosting, I don’t have a dog in this fight.”

(She has discovered that perhaps her weaknesses are not emotional ones, but cream cheese frosting)

 

When Matt and Foggy aren’t in the office, Karen likes to sing and dance to music. Music is something she is almost glad she didn’t grow up with, because she has been able to discover it and appreciate it and it gives her something to marvel at, something that humanity has woven beautifully. Something they did right.

Sometimes she will spin around the office quietly to music from the 30s and the 40s, humming and spinning her way through _Bei Meir Bist Du Schoen_ and _Over the Rainbow_. Sometimes, however, she will listen to more modern music, dance by jumping up and down in circles and yelling along to whatever song she happens to be listening to.

She is bouncing up and down to _Buddy Holly_ , singing along perhaps a little louder than necessary, which is no doubt why when she spins around and sees Foggy and Matt watching her from the doorway, Foggy grinning and Matt smirking with his eyebrows raised, she is genuinely surprised, flailing a little.

Foggy and Matt raise their hands and clap. She groans and covers her face in her hands.

“Can we pretend you didn’t see any of that?” she mumbles.

“Matt didn’t,” Foggy says. “He can’t see anything.”

“I hate you,” she mutters and Matt snorts. The chorus comes back for the song, and Foggy surprises her by grabbing her by one hand and putting the other on her shoulder and swinging her around in a wide arc in a parody of dancing.

“ _I don’t care what they say about us anyways,_ ” he rhapsodizes in a ridiculously deep voice while she laughs. “ _I don’t care bout that!_ ”

“It’s a good thing,” Matt murmurs, resting his cane against the wall. “Otherwise that dancing might be a problem for you.”

Foggy releases Karen to hang up his coat. “Don’t listen to him,” he informs her. “He’s just jealous of my mad dancing skills.”

“That’s the only reason I can think of.”

“Liar.” Foggy swans into his office and Karen turns to see Matt still smiling slightly.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says. “I bet you can’t do any better than I can.”

“You can sing as much as you want in the office, you know,” he tells her. “It’s nice.”

She blinks. “Really?”

“You sound happy. Also you have a lovely voice.”

Karen does not go pink. “You’re just saying that because you’ve been conditioned to Foggy’s voice all these years.”

Matt laughs. “Certainly a possibility.”

“I heard that, you traitor!” Foggy yells. “Liars and traitors! I am surrounded by liars and traitors.”

 

It’s when Karen’s lying on the floor studying some papers, trying not to giggle as Foggy bellows the lyrics to _Anaconda_ while Matt loudly debates the merits of nobody suspecting a blind guy of pushing a man out a window that she realizes that feels whole.

She has no idea if this is how normal people feel all the time. She doesn’t know what _normal people_ feel, won’t ever know. She doesn’t know if her idea of whole is perhaps only half broken by the standards of other people.

But by her standards it is complete, and the thought warms her as Matt literally sticks his fingers in his ears while Foggy raises his volume.

 

“ _I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR THIS WHEN I DECIDED TO STAY IN NEW YORK, YOU KNOW!_ ” Foggy yells as they run through the alleys. Karen snatches a trashcan lid off the sidewalk and decapitates a robot with it. “ _I SIGNED UP FOR THE GIANT FUCKING RATS AND THE SHADY SIDE STREETS AND THE SMELL OF TRASH ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE BUT I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR ANY OF THIS- THIS SUPERHERO CRAP!”_

Karen yanks off her heel and jams it in the head of a robot. There are a lot of them swanning around the streets, chrome and red eyed and generally menacing. “ _I’m sure everyone else did!_ ” she yells back. “ _Why are you still carrying your briefcase?”_

“ _I don’t know!_ ”

Her phone sings out Matt’s ringtone and she haphazardly shoves it between her elbow and her cheek while she throws her other heel at the droid. It expertly pierces the shiny head. “ _This is not the best time!_ ” she bellows.

“Are you okay?” Matt’s voice is urgent.

“Fine, fine. Hang on.” She jumps on the shoulders of a robot and rips his head off. “I’m back, yes, I’m fine.”

“How’s Foggy?”

Karen glances over her shoulder to see Foggy swing his briefcase around and damage a robot enough that he goes down. “Wow. Pretty good, actually.”

“Are you sure?”

She curses in Polish when a robot gets too close. “No, I’m bleeding out on the street, Foggy’s been decapitated,” she snaps. “Remember me well.”

“That’s not funny.”

“You can be reproachful at me later! If you can fix this, fix it!”

“We’re working on it. Be careful.”

He hangs up before she can ask who _we_ is. She swears louder and beats a robot with a pipe until its head falls off.

It only actually lasts about ten minutes, during which Karen and Foggy take care of a startling amount of robots, Karen’s shoes are ruined, and Foggy’s knuckles apparently ache from when he discovered that punching robots is different than punching humans. Then the robots all abruptly drop like puppets with strings cut.

Foggy nudges one with his toe. “They totally just _Phantom Menaced_ ,” he says. “You think that means we won?”

“I don’t know what that reference means.” Karen’s already got her phone pressed to her ear.

“Good. You’re saving yourself intense scarring.”

Matt picks up. “Everything’s okay?”

“My shoes are scorched,” she tells him. “And Foggy won’t stop whining about his knuckles.”

“ _Bruising_ , Karen,” Foggy emphasizes and she waves him off.

“Nothing more serious?”

“They were nice shoes, Matt.”

“ _And nice knuckles!_ ”

Matt chuckles. “Of course. Very serious.”

“We’re walking to your place because it’s closer and you’re probably better stocked with alcohol.” Karen dumps her shoes in a trash bin. Walking in her tights is better than walking in shoes with one heel broken. “If you’re not there I’m busting the door down.”

“I’ll be there. Might have company.”

It’s probably Claire. Karen likes Claire. “Yeah, fine. See you soon.”

She and Foggy trudge wearily to Matt’s apartment. The residents of Hell’s Kitchen are unfazed, sweeping up rubble from in front of their storefronts.

“Can we sue someone for this?” she asks Foggy as he unlocks the door to Matt’s apartment. “I feel like we should be able to sue for this.”

“I dunno.” Foggy dumps his briefcase on Matt’s counter. “Hey, Matt, can we sue the Universe for oh.”

Karen peers over his shoulder. Tony Stark is looking over Matt’s CD collection, soot smeared across his face.

“Your friend has terrible taste in music,” Stark says.

Foggy looks stunned. Karen’s too tired for this shit.

“You have crap on your face,” she says. “Where’s Matt?”

“I’m in here!” Matt calls. “Bedroom, outfitting people with clothes.”

“Kay.” Karen heads right to the fridge and pulls out an entire pint of Americone Dream. Matt thinks he’s being sneaky by shoving it all the way to the back of his freezer. It’s adorable.

“That’s mine,” she hears Matt say from closer.

“Correction. It _was_ yours. Now it’s mine. And Foggy’s.” She turns around to see Matt in his post-fight clothes of a hoodie and sweatpants at the head of the Avengers.

“Company, huh?” she asks dryly. He gives her one of his little shrugs and smiles.

“I did warn you.”

“There’s a ridiculous amount of superheroes in the vicinity,” Foggy says. “Give me that ice cream.”

Karen snorts and hands it over.

“Karen, Foggy, the Avengers,” Matt says calmly. “Avengers, Karen, Foggy.”

“You okay?” She hears a man murmur in the back, and then someone pushes her way to the front and it’s like Karen’s entire world slows down.

Even though she’s aged in the many years since, it’s almost like nothing has changed. Natalia is covered in sweat and cuts and her lip is bleeding and it is so like the old days that something in her aches a little.

Foggy sucks in a sharp breath and Matt instantly looks a little stricken.

“Sorry,” he mutters guiltily. “I forgot, it didn’t occur to me to-“

“It’s fine,” Karen hears herself say. She takes a step towards Natalia. “It’s okay, Matt, it’s fine.”

Natalia hesitantly reaches out and touches Karen’s wrist. She draws back almost instantly.

“ _I thought you must be dead,_ ” she murmurs in Russian. “ _I did not think there was ever a chance two of us could survive._ ”

Karen and Natalia are standing directly in front of each other by now, face to face.

“ _I saw you on the news,”_ she tells Natalia. “ _I saw what you did at SHIELD. You kept my secret.”_

_“Of course. Why didn’t you contact me?”_

_“I thought it would keep you safer. I don’t think I was ready to come face to face with you yet._ ” Natalia carries around a lot of memories.

She nods slightly. _“Are you ready now?_ ”

Karen smiles a little shakily and holds out her hand. “Hi,” she says in English, voice a little thick. “I’m Karen Page. My best friends are lawyers. Sometimes one of them puts on devil horns and beats up bad guys.”

Natalia smiles back at her, and it’s not as hesitant as the first and last smile Karen ever saw her wear, like she’s had more practice. She takes Karen’s hand. “I’m Natasha Romanoff,” she answers in English, voice barely trembling. “My best friends are superheroes. Sometimes I go out with them and beat up bad guys.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Natasha Romanoff.”

“Likewise, Karen Page.”

They stand for two more seconds before Karen suddenly tugs Natasha into a hug. This is easier than last time, too, and almost as desperate. Karen buries her face in Natasha’s shoulder.

“ _I’ve missed you, sister,_ ” she whispers in Russian. Natasha just nods. She doesn’t need to do anything else.

Someone clears their throat. “Hi. Clint. Confused.”

Karen and Natasha pull away. Karen doesn’t even bother trying to disguise it when she wipes her eyes.

“It’s an old Russian folk tale,” Natasha tells Clint. “Best told with vodka and by candlelight.”

The man in purple, evidently Clint, groans. “Oh, man, one of _those_. Those usually end with one of us getting shot.”

Karen laughs, and she is surprised by how clear and clean it is, how perfectly unfettered it is. Matt grins at her, and Foggy loudly declares he would like to get rid of the awkwardness by discussing exactly _whose_ fault the robots were, which immediately starts Stark off about plausible deniability, and Karen is smiling so hard her face hurts, and…

and Natasha is smiling too, and it is a strange mix, one of her past and her present and her future, and Karen Page thinks that yes, perhaps maybe, this may work out just fine in the end after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know how long it's been that I've been working on this, you guys. A really long time. So much time.
> 
> I also have a second Karen Page origin story, but this one is a little easier, because I have the Room to jump off of and I'm starting from scratch in the other one.
> 
> I have no idea how good this is (I suspect it meanders far too much), but I enjoy it nonetheless.
> 
> (The Hozier song Karen is listening to is Work Song)
> 
> EDIT: Shmaylor did an incredible podfic that I can't recommend enough for this story. Please, carve some time out of your day and go listen to it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] both have sharp teeth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7840399) by [Shmaylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shmaylor/pseuds/Shmaylor)




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